


And yet I live

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 07:51:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13922664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: Barbrey revisits Winterfell.  It is not as she remembers.





	And yet I live

Barbrey is a crow come to scavenge, in her widow’s weeds. As she walks through the abandoned grounds, her footsteps crunch, oddly loud in the stillness. The snow is not heavy, for winter has not yet fully descended, but the air is chilled enough that she clutches her cloak, pulling it tightly around her. Her breath, coming slightly hard, is visible in the morning air. It is this, and the way that her gloved hands tightly clutch the woolen fabric of her garment, that betray her. Barbrey is not prone to merriment. Such things were abandoned when she was a maid, and those days, so colored by disappointment and tinged by bitterness, seem long ago indeed as she beholds the ruin.

The Winterfell of her girlhood had been a bustling holdfast, surely the center of Northern life. It was here that her father had come to bow and scrape, paying homage to his liege lord. It was here that he had brought his daughters, one already promised to another, the other eligible. If she pauses she can hear her father’s voice in her ear, an insistent buzz.

_Stark has wed Ryswell before_ , he had assured her, _long ago. They are not too proud for the likes of us._

She was not convinced. It was only blood ties and desperation for an heir that had forced Roose Bolton’s hand in the matter of her sister’s engagement, and her family had grown so fractured in recent years, their efforts divided between sneering cousins. She knew then that they were no more than an afterthought in anyone’s mind, jumped-up horselords more handy with a pack of cards and a bitter Dornish red than a greatsword. They were buried in the west.

But she had hoped then, that things might be different. That she might be raised up, like her sister, nay higher. And although she would now not allow herself to admit her feelings, she had had affection for the Stark boy, although time had so colored her memories that Barbrey was unsure if it had been love, or merely lust. Brandon had had a charming way, but beyond the bedchamber and their flirtatious sparring, there had been little substance. In any case, it had not been so, and although Willam had been a decent man, they had not shared a bed long enough to know each other. His sun-bleached bones now rested in a distant land, dried out long ago under the harsh Dornish sun. Barbrey feels it, the old tension, as it fills her body, tightening her shoulders, and making her breath come harder. Her fingers, numb now, dig into her cloak, although she can feel nothing. 

She continues her walk, noting that despite the snow, some areas still seem to smolder, and the harsh scent of smoke still lingers in the air. It is corruption, here of all places, and Barbrey’s heart is made oddly lighter by the knowledge that everything is susceptible to ruin.

Even Winterfell. 

Even the Starks could fall.

She smiles, lips aching from the tightness of it, and from the frost in the air. 

*

Roose waits for her in his makeshift solar, the tumbledown room with mismatched furniture and sooty, smoking fireplace so unlike the careful domain of the Dreadfort, where everything always had its place. _How best to hide blades recently clotted with blood?_ Barbrey thinks idly, the impertinent thought pleasing her. She knows what a hypocrite her goodbrother is, has been, concealing his dirty secrets in distant dungeons, muffled with staunch iron doors. And in village mills, but _those_ transgressions were always placated with coin. 

He stands to greet her, miming the courtesies expected of a lord, although there is no real affection between them, only a sort of contemptuous familiarity. Barbrey does not flinch when his dry lips press her gloved hand. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her revulsion, and further, there is little that Roose Bolton can do that would frighten her. Despite what she knows of his recreational habits, her favor is too hard-won for him to jeopardize their friendship. House Bolton, she knows, has never been well-loved in the North. 

“Lady Dustin,” he says softly, his voice barely audible above the crack and pop of the fire. “I trust that you have had time to explore the grounds.”

Barbrey calms her expression, so as not to smile. It would not do for Roose Bolton to guess at the pleasure she had taken in Winterfell’s ruin. “A graveyard,” she says at last. “There is nothing left of the Winterfell that I knew. And you think to rebuild?” She trails off, leaving this last thought as more of a challenge than a question. 

Roose nods. “We have the strength to do so.” 

Barbrey doubts this. What remains of the Northern houses would not lift a finger to help Lord Bolton unless coerced, aside from, perhaps, her own natal house. 

“My wife’s family has proven themselves quite useful and agreeable in this.”

_Ah yes_ , Barbrey muses, _the Freys. Ingratiating themselves as usual, now that Roose has made a bride of one of their teeming numbers._ She thought little of them, if she ever thought of them at all. The Trident lay far distant to the south, and did not concern her. It was Barrowton where her concerns came to roost, Barrowton and now Winterfell, as the ruined holdfast was far too close for comfort, and its quarters teemed with strange men these days. 

She wondered sometimes when Roose would tire of their courteous little dance, when he would send hard-faced Bolton men to take her wooden town, the only legacy left her by a husband whose face was but a blur and whose affections a distant whisper. But reparations also intruded on her thoughts, now that he’d brought up the Freys. 

_It wasn’t just Stark men whose blood ran in rivers at the Red Wedding._

There had been men out of Barrowton, yes, and men aplenty from the Rills. 

Not Bolton men. Perhaps their banners were sufficiently saturated for Roose’s liking. And he was a cautious man. But he had not been as cautious as he could have been in this. 

Barbrey tucks the disloyal thought away in her breast, where it will lodge like a dagger, and smiles courteously as Roose’s conversation, such as it is, dies away like the fire that flickers in the grate. 

*

They had put her in Catelyn Stark’s rooms. Now faded from their once sumptuous appearance, and fitted out with furniture just as ramshackle as that in Roose’s solar, they serve more as a poor substitute than the bitter pleasure that her presence might have once granted her. As Barbrey takes a turn about the room, she tries to imagine how they might have been when their lady was in residence. 

_Did Cat Stark sleep in a bed adorned with river trout? Did she bury herself in piles of downy quilts and furs?_

Southron blood runs cold this far north. It is too thin, too cultivated, for harsh places and harsher people. Barbrey laughs, and the sound is harsh and ugly in the stillness. 

_How many times did she laugh? Did that sad faced husband of hers make her smile?_

Barbrey catches her reflection in the glass, marred by an ugly scratch that distorts the beaten metal, just as the cold smirk twists her face. She turns her back on it. Despite the unusual warmth of the room, she clutches herself, hugs herself, hands still gloved, leather flush against the dark wool of her gown. 

She will later find the bruises on her upper arms.

_Now they are dead, and his bones will soon only be fit for dogs._ Fit for dust, fit for the tombs. She thinks of faces now, a pale cupbearer wearing the borrowed axe of Dustin, a paler bride cloaked in palest pink. _So many dead now. And yet I live._

Barbrey’s smirk stretches into a smile, beatific in its expanse. 

_How many more will join them?_


End file.
